Cleanup of Najafgarh Drain completed between Timarpur, Bharat Nagar: LG office

The municipal commissioner has fixed a 10-day deadline for completing the de-silting of the drains in the catchment area

The project to rejuvenate Najafgarh drain, one of the biggest polluting sources of the Yamuna river in the capital, has de-silted and cleaned up the stretch between Timarpur and Bharat Nagar, the lieutenant governor’s office said in a statement on Saturday.

Lieutenant governor VK Saxena inspects Najafgarh drain on Saturday. (Twitter/LTGOVDELHI)

Lieutenant governor VK Saxena inspected the stretch near the Mall Road bridge and Bharat Nagar on Saturday and appealed to local residents not to throw garbage in the drain. “Now that the seemingly undoable task of rejuvenating the Najafgarh Drain and the revival of Sahibi river had started becoming a reality, people should own up their valuable legacy and keep it clean,” Saxena said. He found fresh garbage has been thrown on the cleaned and refurbished banks.

Saxena has been monitoring progress of the project since June, when he first visited the drain. He had then suggested that the drain could be developed into an ecotourism hub, with a navigable waterway where activities like boat rides and water sports could be offered.

The 57km Najafgarh drain connects the Najafgarh jheel (lake) to the Yamuna river and has as many as 121 smaller drains discharging sewage into it. The annual silt and sewage deposit in the drain is to the tune of around 3-4 lakh metric tonnes (MT). Currently, about 80 lakh MT of solid waste is lying deposited in the drain. A 12km drain stretch from Timarpur to Basai Darapur will be developed as a waterway to operate passenger and goods boats in the coming months.

The work on cleaning and rejuvenating the drain is being undertaken by using partial gravitational de-silting technology and trapping of 32 feeder drains bringing in untreated sewage and silt into the drain, said an official of the lieutenant governor’s office. “In the first phase, work on the stretch between Timarpur and Bharat Nagar was started towards the mouth of the drain. While the work of de-silting and restoration of embankments from Wazirabad to Timarpur had been completed in November, further work on the 7.5km stretch between the Mall Road bridge and Bharat Nagar, which was scheduled to be completed by the middle of January, is going ahead of schedule,” the official said, declining to be named.

Multiple agencies like the department of irrigation and flood control, Delhi Development Authority, Delhi Jal board public works department and the Municipal corporation of Delhi, among others, are invloved in the cleaning and rejuvenation of Najafgarh drain.

“Visible upgradation and change in terms of flowing water, absence of deep-seated silt, repaired and refurbished embankments and trapped feeder can be seen in the stretch where phase-1 is being undertaken,” the official added. “Apathy and neglect on part of agencies over the decades have converted the water body into a stinking, dead drain.”

Over the last couple of months, 50,000 tonnes of silt has been removed and 27,000 tonnes of surface garbage accumulated on the outer periphery of the drain has been cleared. “This garbage is being lifted by the MCD by temporarily breaking the boundaries to reach these inaccessible embankments,” official added.

Large amounts of waste is still being thrown directly in the drain at various hot spots such as Vijay Nagar, Christian Colony, Swarna Ashram, GTB Nagar and Indra Vihar, a MCD official said. “The sanitation department is deploying monitoring teams, while the private concessionaire handling the waste management in the zone has been tasked with carrying out IEC (information, education and communication) activities in these areas,” he said, seeking anonymity. “Once the drive is complete, we will start issuing challans to the defaulters.”

The municipal commissioner has fixed a 10-day deadline for completing the de-silting of the drains in the catchment area, the official said. A 7-day deadline has been fixed for the maintenance and environment management services departments to check the outlets of all public toilets along the drain to prevent direct sewage discharge.

While boating and other ecotourism activities can be allowed on the drain, no such activities are planned or required near the eco-sensitive area of the Najafgarh lake, according to Neha Sinha of the Bombay Natural History Society, who was part of the expert committee that framed Delhi’s Environment Management Plan.

“Once cleaned, the drain can certainly facilitate such activities, but the initial focus is to trap all industries that are releasing effluents into drains, which end up in the Najafgarh drain or the jheel,” Sinha said. “Sewage, too, needs to be trapped through sewage treatment plants. And only when that is done can other ecotourism activities be looked at.”